Private Tutor: State schools should be teaching Matisse

Our anonymous private tutor is astonished by the complexity of public school
scholarship exams - but wonders if the education system would be fairer if
everyone was allowed a go.

"What does Matisse mean by expression in art?” is unlikely to appear on a GCSE exam any time soon. Photo: Images & Stories/Alamy

By A Very Private Tutor

7:00AM GMT 11 Jan 2013

There is a lot of talk about privilege, when it comes to university entrance. I’ve been helping, over the past couple of weeks, a few young people with their interview techniques; I’ve also been tutoring some younger children with exams coming up. And something quite serious struck me. Take a look at these questions:

“Matisse argues here that a painting does not have to depict emotion in order to express emotion. What does Matisse mean by expression in art?”

“Time is the great physician. Discuss”

“To what extent do you think the community should be able to restrict individual freedoms in the interest of long-term benefits?”

Where do you think they come from? University entrance papers? Or 13+ examinations?

Well, if you think the former, then you’d be wrong. These questions come from scholarship entrance papers to our public schools.

They are obviously designed to mark out the better candidates. They are not easy. These papers include sections of Latin by Caesar; impossible codes (which usually have me scratching my head for a bit); logical puzzles; nineteenth-century poetry requiring analysis and comprehension.

Obviously, only a few boys and girls will take these papers: but my point is, if preparatory schools can teach some of their pupils to answer questions of such sophistication and depth at the age of 12 or 13, then it is no wonder that they go on to good universities. And nor should they be slated for doing so. (Incidentally, it’s rare to tutor scholarship children – they tend to be bright enough to do it on their own, or are coming from the state system and need a boost.)

The problem is, there is an obvious incentive for independent preparatory schools to pull their pupils up to this level – places at public schools are harder and harder to attain; scholarships are more competitive and more necessary now that school fees are spiralling out of control; there is more kudos for the school, the more scholars it produces.

This is an incentive lacking in the state system. Children move on to their secondary schools at the age of 11, and are not really challenged until their GCSE exams.

And there is an enormous gulf between these 13+ papers and GCSE papers. The former are arguably even harder than the latter.

It’s a massively unfair world where a 13 year-old in the preparatory school system can argue the nuances of Hobbes and his or her equivalent in the state sector thinks that Hobbes is a cartoon tiger.

Wouldn’t it be a fairer world if this kind of education was available at comprehensive schools, to those who wanted it? Such sophistication is not for everyone at 13 – but there are thousands of bright young teens at state schools who would be champing at the bit to stretch their intellectual muscles in such a way, if only they had the opportunity.

This enormous disjunction in standards is something that leaves state school pupils panting behind – and that can’t be a good thing. But until it is addressed, it’s inevitable that our universities will be full of articulate, bright, privately educated young people who’ve been discussing Matisse since they were born.

*****

On a lighter note, I was reading J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls with a few pupils this month. It’s a common enough examination text. The first question I always ask is what the Inspector’s name reminds them of. His name is Goole: the answer is usually “a ghost,” or similar, since in the play he has a quasi-supernatural function. Not for one boy.

The first thing he said, when I asked him, was “Google. There’s only one letter difference.” Such is the might of technology. I suppose Google is the uber-inspector, after all.

How long is it before the mighty search engine reaches its tentacles into every text? Ford Madox Ford's The Google Soldier? Robert Graves's seminal memoir, Google to All That? And how about William Shakespeare's delightful play, A Midsummer Night's Google?

A Very Private Tutor writes an anonymous column every Friday for Telegraph Education on life as a private tutor to London's super-rich. Read more by this author: